


Not Exactly Seducing the Rich Guy

by annagarny, Kerry_0506



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:51:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annagarny/pseuds/annagarny, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerry_0506/pseuds/Kerry_0506
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benji and Will find themselves on a few missions together, just the two of them, and Benji, for some reason, keeps on getting hurt.</p><p>He gets shot, breaks an ankle and somehow ends up getting roofied.</p><p>Poor Brandt has no option but to keep on looking after his tech, even if things do get a little... uncomfortable... at times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kerry_0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerry_0506/gifts).



“How did we end up doing this entire thing without anyone else coming along?”   
“It’s called covert ops for a reason, Benji, and the fewer people involved the more covert it will actually be.”

“But just the two of us? I mean, there’s usually at least three.”

“C’mon, mate, it’s just a simple stop and drop - you take control of the elevators and send the target to the wrong floor where I’ve re-labelled the doors and when he comes into the room I sedate him, tag him and we move him up to the real room, leave him there and head on home.”

Benji laughed a little at that - and not just the casual drop of ‘mate’ with Brandt’s Boston accent.

“So, you finally get to seduce the rich guy, huh?”

Will glared at Benji for just long enough that the techie started to frown, before he cracked up.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Will asked, shrugging into his suit jacket and shooting his cuffs while Benji grinned, recognizing that he was being messed with.

“Of course not. I had it as my text alert tone for almost six months.”

“Ethan made you change it, didn’t he?”

“He smashed my phone, same thing. You know, I could have recovered the file. In fact, it’s probably still out there, somewhere. The only reason I didn’t was out of respect to you.”

“You are a terrible liar. How did you ever get to be a field agent, again?”

“Bribery and blackmail. I have a lot of leverage, as a hacker I see things that field agents do not want made public.”

“Sure, sure. Don’t tell me.” Will sort of smiled, one corner of his mouth twitching as he shrugged a couple of times, setting his jacket straight.

“Right, well, I better get up there. You get into the system and see if you can’t make those elevators bend to your whims.”

Benji laughed and tried not to watch too closely as Brandt bustled about the room collecting the items he’d need to carry out his mission, instead turning his attention to the screens of the three laptops spread out on the California king-bed before him. Two with multiple surveillance feeds open and the third connected to the main server of the hotel itself, with control of every electronic lock in the place and access to the personnel and guest databases - hopefully, with a few more tweaks he would have control of the elevators and from there everything should be simple. If the notion struck he could have arranged for them a few nights in one of the Presidential Suites, but they were on a mission so a standard double room it had to be. At least they were closer to the ground, this time, but the place only had 14 levels, so it wasn’t quite as imposing as the last place they’d shared a hotel room.

Thankfully enough, in this part of Europe, two men checking into a room with one bed didn’t raise any eyebrows, but Benji had still turned a brilliant shade of scarlet when the clerk at the front desk had asked them if they were traveling for business or pleasure and Will had answered, without so much as a flicker of an eyelid, ‘pleasure’.

Or perhaps it was the resultant smirk from the clerk that had made him go magenta...

Either way there were two leather overnight bags in one of the double rooms on the 3rd floor, set next to each other at the foot of the bed, where they’d been abandoned in favour of hacking into the systems in time for Will to carry out his mission.

Will had one hand on the doorjamb and one foot out the door when Benji noticed the problem.

“Uh, Will?”

“What?” Will did not like the sound of his name when said in that tone. It usually did not bode well.

“Um, well. We seem to have a problem.”

“Problem? Define problem?”

“I can’t control the elevators, not from here.”

“What?” Will hissed, stepping away from the door and letting it close with a muted ‘click’.

“I mean, from the looks of this, it’s a fairly antiquated system, and without one of these plugged directly into the control line I have no say in where or when the doors might open.” Benji held up a single USB thumb-drive and Will looked at it, then down at the $8000 bespoke suit he had just shrugged into.

“Well, if someone has to go down into the elevator shaft, it’s going to be you, Benji.”

“Okay, okay. Just let me get my headlights-” Will would have chuckled at that, but the situation was kind of dire - they had about fifteen minutes to get the elevators under their control or the mark would just go to his own room without being tagged - so he restrained himself.

Four precious minutes later they had taken the stairs down to the basement level where the elevator terminated and (with some help from a large saucepan snatched from the kitchens) managed to wedge the doors open far enough for Benji to jump down into the pit.

He was fiddling around with wires and things, while Brandt kept glancing around, expecting someone to come by and ask what they thought they were doing, messing about in the elevator shaft, when he heard a distinct and very unwelcome noise. 

“Benji, Benji we have to go.”

“What? Three seconds, I’m almost-”

Benji’s sentence was cut off by the sound of high-calibre repeating machine gun-fire, just a short blast, but enough to make Will whip out his sidearm and Benji to grope at the small of his back for his own, before remembering that he’d left it on the side table back up in their room.

A second later the door to the emergency stairs was kicked down and Brandt raised his weapon, leveling it at the guard and taking three shots to incapacitate four of them (nothing lethal, just a lot of pain and in places that made them rather keen to drop their weapons) but there were, in fact, six men firing.

One of them even managed to get off a lucky shot, but it wasn’t until he heard Benji cry out in pain that Will realized what had happened.

With three more bullets he dropped the last two guards then turned and jumped into the bottom of the elevator shaft to find Benji gripping his shoulder and biting his lower lip in an effort not to make any more noise.

“Benji? Benji, stay with me – dammit!” Will extracted his phone and dialed a very particular number on his contact list, spoke some pointed words and then looked at Benji again once he’d terminated the call.

“Five minutes, mate, five minutes until an extraction team gets here. You think you can get up out of this elevator shaft and follow me to the back entrance?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Benji muttered, carefully keeping his eyes averted from the wound that Will was studying with laser-like intensity.

“Good, because we’ve got to get you out of here without leaving too much of your DNA behind and I’m going to have to leave you there while I go back up to the room and get our stuff. You think you can handle that?”

“Here’s hoping that I can, because I'm guessing that it’s our only option right now?"

“That’s the spirit. Come on, let’s get out of here.”


	2. Chapter 2

One arm around Benji, WIll hauled the Brit through the kitchens, keeping his palm clamped on the bullet wound, pressure on and trying not to leave too large a blood trail behind - it was all well and good that the extraction team would also have a cleaner with them, but the less there was to clean the better. It was a good thirty or forty steps to get to the door, but Benji did well, only objecting once Will set him down on the threshold and released him.  
"Okay, I've called for the extraction team, they'll be here in about four minutes - I'm just going to get back up to the room and grab our things. Do you think you can stay conscious?"  
"Probably not." Benji told him, trying to smile as he leaned against the doorjamb, his own hand having replaced Will's, trying to keep pressure on the wound and failing fairly miserably if the blood seeping from between his fingers was any indication.  
"Well, at least try and stay upright. Three minutes."  
"Okay."

Will left his teammate there, not happy about it but with few other options, and took the stairs quickly, checking the corners as quickly as he could and holstering his weapon before he entered the hotel proper, spotting some other armed guards near the front desk when he passed through the lobby and mounted the main staircase, making for their room at a somewhat sedate pace.

Two and a half minutes later, loaded down with the three bags they had bought into the hotel, he took the other elevator, the still-operational one (apparently what Benji had done to the second one had stopped it from operating entirely; but there were two and the other appeared to be functional) all the way to the bottom level.  
"Okay, Ben- Benji?" Will stuttered to a halt, actually dropping one of the bags in shock when he rounded the corner of the kitchens and found nothing but a bloodstain on the doorjamb where Benji had been leaning against it and the sound of a van taking off up the alley.  
"What? No! NO!" He leapt over the bag he'd dropped and sprinted to the door, leaping out of it and unholstering his weapon, leveling it to take a shot at the van but before he could get a clear line it turned the corner and the moment was lost.

He tugged his phone out of his pocket and dialed another number, speaking frantically when the line was picked up and he'd coded himself in.  
"What the hell? The extraction was for two people, why did Benji get taken without me?"  
"I'm sorry, Agent Brandt, but there is no record of an extraction team collecting anyone, yet. The team sent to collect you is still ninety seconds out from your location.  
"WHAT!? Are you telling me that one of the IMF's best tech agents has just been fucking KIDNAPPED!? WITH A BULLET LODGED IN HIS SHOULDER?"  
"I'm sorry, Agent Brandt - please accompany the extraction team to the safe-house and the whereabouts of Agent Dunn will be determined at that point, as will his current state of health."  
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Will hung up and didn't even look at the keypad as he dialled again.

The phone rang about six or seven times as he ducked back into the kitchen to collect the bag he'd dropped, and just as the extraction team's van pulled up the line was answered.

Unfortunately, it was a voicemail pick-up, so, rather than actually speaking with Ethan and demanding some assistance to get their tech back, Brandt had to bite his tongue and try not to sound as if he were speaking through broken glass.

"Ethan, it's Will. Call me back the second you get this. We have a situation." And that was all he could say, really, not knowing who might get the message or what they might do with it.

The extraction van pulled up and as the back door slid open a fresh-faced junior agent poked her head out, all perky smiles and shiny blonde hair. Her face fell, though, when she caught sight of Brandt alone and the bloodstain on the doorjamb behind him.

"Uh, weren't there supposed to be two-"  
"Yes, there were, no, there aren't and if you ask another question between here and the safe house you'll never serve in the field again." Will told her, shoving two of the bags in her direction and shouldering the third, hugging it to himself as he settled in the first unoccupied seat in the van. The junior agent looked stunned for a second, then almost as if she were about to cry, but she seemed to grit her teeth and pull herself together in remarkably good time, tugging the door shut and tapping the driver on the shoulder.

Then van took off with a lurch and headed in the same direction the one carrying Benji had gone, turning the corner the same way, even, and Will leaned forward, wrapping himself around the bag in his lap (Benji's bag, he realised, as his face hit the brown leather) hiding his expression from the now-curious junior agent who had, apparently, gotten over her fear of him fairly quickly.

The fifteen minute ride to the safe-house passed in silence, and WIll spent the entire trip berating himself for leaving Benji alone, injured and unarmed, even for just three minutes.

Ethan was going to kill him, if he didn't have the guts to knock himself out of the way, first.


	3. Chapter 3

The ride to the safehouse seemed to take about fifteen hours rather than fifteen minutes, and in that short time, Will managed to bite two of his nails short enough to start bleeding from both fingertips.

His mood also managed to swing wildly from frustrated to murderous to suicidal to desperate every thirty seconds or so and he found himself counting to ten on each inhale and exhale, trying to regulate his heart rate with deep, calm breaths.

This, for the record, failed miserably.

The van hadn't actually come to a complete stop when Will leapt out, pushing past the junior agent in the doorway and straight into the main rooms of the safehouse, shouting for whoever was in charge and calling Benji’s name, knowing that it was _extremely_ unlikely that Dunn was here, but having to try, anyway.

Unfortunately for him, by the time he'd completed a lap of the house, determining that it was empty, the retrieval van had vacated the garage, leaving just the perky blonde junior agent to keep him company - someone who likely did not have high enough clearance to contact anyone who might have a hope in hell of finding Dunn.

"What's your name?" he demanded, rounding on her as she dropped a black duffel bag onto the kitchen counter.  
"Agent Woods, sir."  
"Where's the secure line to headquarters?"  
"Uh, next to the microwave." She pointed.  
"Great." He then turned his back on her and reached for the black handset, dialling Ethan's number again and leaving him another, terse, message.  
"Ethan, get back to me. Why the hell aren't you answering your phone?" He slammed the handset down and scrubbed a hand through his hair, spinning about in the tiny space and suddenly noticing that his hands were empty.

"Where are the rest of our bags?"  
"In the living room, sir. But, Agent Brandt, before I can let you do anything else I have to confirm your-"  
"Whatever." He stepped past her and into the living room, picking up each bag in turn until he found the one with the laptops inside, tugging one free and dropping onto the couch, firing the machine up and tapping his hands impatiently against his knees as it booted.

"Agent Brandt-"  
"What's the wi-fi password?"  
"Sir, until I confirm your identity, I can't give you the password."  
"Never fucking mind, I'll just hack in." He began tapping away furiously, cursing when he realised that it was an IMF-class firewall he was trying to break through and that it was practically pointless.

Something hard struck him on the back of the head and he turned, ready to shout, when he was cut off by a second Jonathan apple flying towards his face.

Had he not been an IMF agent it is likely that the second projectile would have broken his nose, as it was his knuckles contacted his cheek when he caught the apple, the momentum from Agent Woods' throw forcing his wrist backwards.

"Agent Brandt- if you would just calm down for fifteen seconds, I can complete the identification protocols and give you a direct line to headquarters- we can contact someone and find out if Agent Dunn's subcutaneous tracker chip has been activated!"

Will stared at her for a few seconds, before shifting the laptop onto the coffee table and standing up.

"Okay, Agent Woods. Do your thing."

He held still while a scanner was held to his eyes, doing his best not to blink, and opened his mouth obediently as a DNA swab was taken from the inside of his cheek.

“Thank-you, Agent Brandt.”  
“Call me Will.”  
“Will. Now, if you’ll pass me that laptop I can connect you to the network and we can get in touch with Yusuf – if Agent Dunn has activated his tracking chip then we will be able to locate him.”  
“Yeah, but what if he hasn’t?”  
“Then we remote-activate it and locate him that way.”

Will scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaned over the back of the couch and snagged the laptop, setting it on the kitchen counter and spinning it around so that Agent Woods could connect them to the network, trying his damndest not to fidget as her fingers flew over the keys.

“Okay; I’ve contacted headquarters but we’re going to be waiting about three minutes before the remote activation code will get to the tracker – it wasn’t activated, yet.”  
“So that means he’s still unconscious!”  
“Or that he’s not in any danger.” Woods told him, apparently determined to be optimistic in the face of Will’s evident pessimism.  
“Yeah, well, he was almost passed out twenty minutes ago so I don’t like our-” Will was cut off by the ringtone he’d assigned Ethan (a James Bond theme from the ‘70’s, customised by Benji, not Will himself) ringing from inside his pocket.

The phone was pulled out of his pocket so fast that it seemed to fly out of his hand, he caught it with the other and scrabbled for a few moments before he could land a thumb on the screen and answer the call.

“Ethan!? What the hell took you so long?!”  
“Will... calm down, please. What’s happened?”  
“Benji’s been shot.”  
“Yes, I know.”  
“And he’s been taken by some people, not our people – wait, what?”  
“I know Benji’s been shot, he’s on the table in front of me here, they just put him under general anaesthetic so that they could stitch him back together.”  
“WHAT!?”  
“The retrieval team found Benji and you weren’t there – he’d lost too much blood so they called for a second team to come and collect you; until I got your messages just now we thought you’d gone missing because the second team couldn’t find you!”  
“What- wait, you mean, the van that took Benji was one of _ours_?”  
“Well, yeah. You think anyone else would collect one of our agents from a secure location?”  
“Hardly secure – we were ambushed by half a dozen heavily armed mercenaries!”  
“Well, relatively secure.” Ethan conceded.  
“So, what you’re telling me, is that Benji’s been taken to a different safehouse and that the IMF communications are so badly managed that two separate retrieval teams were sent to collect us, without either of them knowing that the other had been sent?”   
“...that’s pretty much it.” Ethan told him, and Will was certain that he heard more than a little exasperation in his tone.  
“So...” Will prompted.  
“So, what?”  
“So are you going to tell me where my tech is or do I have to back-trace the phone call and break in?”  
“Oh, that, well, sure. I’ll call headquarters and get the address of this place forwarded to you.”  
“Excellent. See you in half an hour.”  
“Oh, and Will?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Don’t ever leave me a voicemail like that ever again, unless you know for certain that someone is actually dead.”  
“Yeah, yeah. See you soon.”


End file.
